After spending 21 years in prison for murder, Sean Walker was released in 2014. Since then, he has been working to help others. And Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has cited Sean’s successful rehabilitation as a sign of what’s possible when inmates are offered the supportive programs they need to re-enter society and live productive lives. In this letter, Sean writes about how the Peace Education Program (PEP) helped him get his life on track.

In 1993 I committed the most horrific act imaginable. I took the life of another human being. Not only did I destroy this life, the lives of the victim’s family members, and the lives of my own family members, but I also destroyed mine.

I started my journey for answers. How could I have allowed myself to get to the point where I believed it was okay to commit this crime? My search began with God.

Most of the answers I received were from spiritual teachers. They informed me that the human spirit was naturally evil and that my evil nature eventually took over my consciousness. Once this happens, we are controlled by unchecked emotions, and it causes us to sin or commit acts of sin. In other words, it was natural to do wrong.

This didn’t sit well with me. I concluded that if it was natural to do wrong, then doing wrong would make you feel good. But it doesn’t. Doing wrong makes you feel horrible—full of regret and remorse. So doing wrong must not be natural. Doing good makes you feel good, so good acts must be natural. So then I equated good acts and feeling good with peaceful acts and feeling at peace. So peace must be natural.

I started to look for the word “peace” in my spiritual search. I discovered that the operative word that the Hindus search for is “peace,” that Jesus greeted his disciples with “peace” after he was resurrected and before he ascended. Jerusalem is the “city of peace.” And not only does every Muslim greet each other with a phrase that means “peace be upon you,” but the Arabic root word for Islam is “peace.”

So peace was the answer. It’s what I didn’t have. It was what I lost. It was what was needed. It was part of my nature. It was my nature.

So I read and studied and prayed for peace. I fasted for peace. I sacrificed for peace. I learned the word “peace” in different languages. I tried to create peace in my prison dorm, on my detail, and between other inmates. I was given the title “The Peacemaker” by correctional officers and by correctional staff including wardens. I was able to bring peace to everyone but myself.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to the Peace Education Program that I realized I was looking for peace in all the wrong areas. I was looking everywhere but inside of myself. Prem Rawat told me that real peace was inside of me. And this is where the journey starts.

So I started looking inward and haven’t stopped. After I was released from prison, the lessons of peace in the program were so powerful that I wanted to share it with my brothers who were still incarcerated—the ones who hadn’t yet been introduced to the peace that laid dormant inside of them.

I am honored to now be a facilitator of the Peace Education Program. This inner quest for peace is the only true freedom, and I am compelled to spread this message to as many people as I can.

Your story shows that there is always hope that human beings will find the peace that is sitting inside them and turn their lives around in such a wonderful way, whatever they have done or whatever tragic circumstances have befallen them. Thank you, Sean, for sharing your inspiring words of hope and peace.

I believe that in our world today we need a choice from both religious and secular peace teachings. Though ideally for me personally I draw on a combination of the two.
Believing that not only does GOD work through all the Faiths, but even for us unwittingly through secularism and Humanism.
I believe that there should be such education in all our schools, whilst aiming in the direction of a ( Godly) Utopia.
By the way, I call my personal Belief System: LIFISM.

Thank you so much, Sean. I agree with you 100%, that PEACE is what matters most, and we need peace both in our personal lives and in our society, because if we don’t have personal peace first, how can we ever create a more peaceful society, where we respect each others basic human rights and needs?

We never had world peace in our human history and what a challenge is this, if we can make a peaceful society possible, where we respect each other needs and human rights and where we raise our children in a way, that would make us proud to be human.

“Peace will be humanities greatest accomplishment” ever in history, but … what does it take, to make this PRACTICAL and possible?

As JF Kennedy, Einstein and Gandhi said again and again, we cannot have world peace, if we as humans don’t change our hearts, our minds and using our clear intellect and hearts also start changing our political, educational and economic systems. That is why peace education of our children (and their parents) in South Africa, Columbia and in all other countries is needed so much, because what we teach our childen is what they will remember and what our society will become in near future.

It’s people, who started ALL the wars and it’s people, who have to stop them by knowing our priorities, by making wiser choices, by respecting the basic human rights and needs, as defined by Maslov and the UN and by educating our children well.

We need to be kind, compassionate and respectful to others and create a safe society, where we all can live in peace, as Einstein and Gandhi said.

Peace activist A.J. Muste said:.

“The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?”
― A.J. Muste

“There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”
― A.J. Muste

“No Big Power in all history ever thought of itself as an aggressor. That is still true today.”
― A.J. Muste

“We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.”

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The Mission of TPRF

is to address the fundamental human needs of food, water and peace. Through a variety of programs and initiatives, TPRF is dedicated to helping build a world at peace, one person at a time, so that people can live with: